... not from a court case, but from a government hearing. Court cases are tough, because they frequently use complicated legal terminology that makes it harder to comprehend (an issue, with freshmen). Government hearings seem rather more accessible to me. I hadn't thought of doing a "field trip." I suspect that might be hard to arrange, and that the quality of the outing would vary wildly depending on who was arguing and about what.

I have a PDF of the transcript I used; it comes from a hearing before the Senate Judiciary Committee regarding the Copyright Term Extension Act of 1995 (which eventually passed into law as the Sonny Bono Copyright Term Extension Act of 1998). I wanted some pro-copyright voices in the units, and these suited nicely. The first witness is Jack Valenti, of MPAA fame. The second is Alan Menken, a composer (he wrote the songs in Disney's version of "Aladdin"). There weren't any anti-copyright witnesses till the very end of the hearing, when a lawyer made some worried remarks about protecting the public domain.

I would attach the PDF, but it seems you can't attach files to responses, only to initial posts in the blog. Email if you want a copy ... government publications, including transcripts of hearings, aren't eligible for copyright, so we can sling copies about all we like.

That's funny that you bring this up, Anthony. Just yesterday I was talking to a lawyer friend of mine about RHE 306, and she suggested that I take my students to see a court case be argued ("lawyers use rhetoric!"). I know nothing about how I would go about that, but I'm sure it's possible... Reading a transcript could be really boring, but I bet you could choose the interesting bits.